Because there are way too many books being written.
"Everyone has a book inside them, which is exactly where it should, I think, in most cases, remain." -- Christopher Hitchens
Why are debut novels failing to launch?
11–20 of 260 posts
Re: Why are debut novels failing to launch?
#12Spent several years writing and editing my first book before thinking the job was finished when I hit the publish now button. But it is literally only half the job done. The hell now is unless you get friends and family or an agency involved to push it and market it it will languish on the 500th page of any Amazon search forever. Oh and did I say that there are thousands of books a day released and there is nowhere y…
> I guess the only ones destined to read it are the AI training algorithms.
I'm imagining a lone genius toiling away at a novel and dying in obscurity, with his work gaining recognition only after his death, à la Herman Melville, except in this future the writing eventually enters the canon by deeply impressing not human but machine readers.
Re: Why are debut novels failing to launch?
#13Spent several years writing and editing my first book before thinking the job was finished when I hit the publish now button. But it is literally only half the job done. The hell now is unless you get friends and family or an agency involved to push it and market it it will languish on the 500th page of any Amazon search forever. Oh and did I say that there are thousands of books a day released and there is nowhere y…
> HN and reddit will also immediately block self-promotion even if relevant to the audience (
HN doesn't block self promotion if it comes up as part of a conversation, e.g. "I'm having this technical problem." Re: "I wrote a book about how to solve that!"
Also you can at least put a link in your profile!
Reddit has tons of self promos all the time, it just depends on the subreddit. Also it helps if you're a long time active member in a community.
Re: Why are debut novels failing to launch?
#14My long retired parents met and worked in publishing. The continued deterioration of the industry is a source of deep sadness for them. I personally however recently found my own ray of hope. By chance I started reading something I really liked, found it was published by a tiny house that has a subscription plan- which is different from an aggregator having a book of the month kind of thing- and publishes super niche…
What you said reminded me of this Royal Road ( https://www.royalroad.com/home ) website I came across. It is not physical publishing (at least I don't think so), but it is a large collection of different authors who release books / work incrementally. The work mainly seems to be fiction of different varieties.
Royal Road is a place for a lot of folks to get audiences seeded before they inevitably move on to some combination of Patreon, Amazon Kindle Unlimited, and Audible.
One very notable example of this is Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman. He's even just announced that he managed to sell publishing only rights to Ace for large scale distribution which to my knowledge is a first (from authors that started on Royal Road).
https://x.com/mattdinniman/status/1780998536529883622
Also, I'd highly recommend reading Dungeon Crawler Carl if you enjoy anything close to Douglas Adams-esque comedic sci-fi. Its definitely trends a lot more "adult" than Douglas Adams, but that's about as close as I can think of off the top of my head for comparison. And I'd very much recommend the Audible versions narrated by Jeff Hayes for anyone that does audio books. The Sound Booth Theater production is also good but I'd only recommend that if you're doing a re-listen.
Re: Why are debut novels failing to launch?
#15My long retired parents met and worked in publishing. The continued deterioration of the industry is a source of deep sadness for them. I personally however recently found my own ray of hope. By chance I started reading something I really liked, found it was published by a tiny house that has a subscription plan- which is different from an aggregator having a book of the month kind of thing- and publishes super niche…
What are the names of these books?
Re: Why are debut novels failing to launch?
#16Spent several years writing and editing my first book before thinking the job was finished when I hit the publish now button. But it is literally only half the job done. The hell now is unless you get friends and family or an agency involved to push it and market it it will languish on the 500th page of any Amazon search forever. Oh and did I say that there are thousands of books a day released and there is nowhere y…
I agree on it being self satisfying. I wrote a short story on my blog once that I seriously doubt anyone ever read. It was a cyberpunk story, but the themes were really very much about how I felt about having my startup crash and burn early on. After finishing it I felt like I'd finally been able to express how I felt about everything.
Re: Why are debut novels failing to launch?
#17Spent several years writing and editing my first book before thinking the job was finished when I hit the publish now button. But it is literally only half the job done. The hell now is unless you get friends and family or an agency involved to push it and market it it will languish on the 500th page of any Amazon search forever. Oh and did I say that there are thousands of books a day released and there is nowhere y…
I don't understand why Hacker News and Reddit block self promotion.
"Hey, look at a thing I made!" is a lot more interesting than a lot of the other drivel that gets posted.
Re: Why are debut novels failing to launch?
#18Spent several years writing and editing my first book before thinking the job was finished when I hit the publish now button. But it is literally only half the job done. The hell now is unless you get friends and family or an agency involved to push it and market it it will languish on the 500th page of any Amazon search forever. Oh and did I say that there are thousands of books a day released and there is nowhere y…
Isn’t “Show HN” a thing that exists for self-promotion? It doesn’t guarantee anyone will upvote it, but seems like it’s fine?
Re: Why are debut novels failing to launch?
#19Spent several years writing and editing my first book before thinking the job was finished when I hit the publish now button. But it is literally only half the job done. The hell now is unless you get friends and family or an agency involved to push it and market it it will languish on the 500th page of any Amazon search forever. Oh and did I say that there are thousands of books a day released and there is nowhere y…
I don't understand why Hacker News and Reddit block self promotion. "Hey, look at a thing I made!" is a lot more interesting than a lot of the other drivel that gets posted.
Hacker News doesn't block self promotion. You are free to post your own stories linking to your own work, I've done it, people do it all the time. There's a whole section for it, 'Show HN' (although it's not required to post there). And you're free to post links to your work in comments when relevant.
Of course spam is unwelcome everywhere. Don't overdo it and don't be deceptive about it, and you'll be fine.
Re: Why are debut novels failing to launch?
#20Spent several years writing and editing my first book before thinking the job was finished when I hit the publish now button. But it is literally only half the job done. The hell now is unless you get friends and family or an agency involved to push it and market it it will languish on the 500th page of any Amazon search forever. Oh and did I say that there are thousands of books a day released and there is nowhere y…
> HN and reddit will also immediately block self-promotion even if relevant to the audience ( HN doesn't block self promotion if it comes up as part of a conversation, e.g. "I'm having this technical problem." Re: "I wrote a book about how to solve that!" Also you can at least put a link in your profile! Reddit has tons of self promos all the time, it just depends on the subreddit. Also it helps if you're a long time…
HN doesn't block self promotion in stories either. There's a whole section for it, "Show HN".